Tag: Chicago

Rev. Donna Schaper, senior minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York, is featured in a new, short video interview by Tracy Thompson for Jezebel. Rev. Schaper talks about the formation of the Clergy Consultation Service and her own work with the group, and about the Chicago women’s abortion group Jane. She also speaks of the current situation regarding abortion in the U.S.–and what may need to happen if the law changes. (Oh, and the video includes a couple of wonderful archival photos of Howard Moody and Arlene Carmen.)

Hugh Hefner has died at the age of 91. We’d like to note a connection that not many of his obituaries will mention: that the Playboy magazine empire he founded also helped a group of Chicago clergy to start a chapter of the Clergy Consultation Service on Problem Pregnancies (as it was called there) and to expand throughout the Midwest.

But Playboy Foundation grants went to some very good causes. Illinois Citizens for the Medical Control of Abortion, a legal reform group started in 1966, received one. It was through that group that the founder of the Chicago CCS, Rev. E. Spencer Parsons, first met University of Chicago doctoral candidate Ronald L. Hammerle. In 1968, the Chicago CCS received a Playboy grant that allowed Parsons to hire Hammerle as a full-time administrator for the group. Nationally, the CCS had almost no direct employees; only the Chicago CCS and the national group in New York seem to have found the means to hire a full-time (though temporary) employee through a grant.

Hammerle not only organized and administered the Chicago CCS but also reached out to organize CCS chapters in other Midwestern states and to find capable doctors. He collected follow-up reports from women about their experiences with doctors. Hammerle also kept statistics for the group and wrote his dissertation on the work of the CCS. His research provided statistics used by CCS clergy as they testified at state legislative hearings around the country. Women counseled by the Chicago clergy would never have dreamed that the referral service was partially funded by a Playboy Foundation grant.

When Hammerle’s year of full-time employment was done, Parsons and Hammerle decided not to reapply to the Playboy Foundation for funding. Hammerle moved on to work with the CCS’s New York City abortion clinic, Women’s Services, and then for Planned Parenthood in Chicago and Iowa. The CCS owed a great deal to Hammerle–and it was the Hefner business empire that had enabled the CCS to hire him.

The television series “The Handmaid’s Tale” has been a hit for Hulu, and won Elisabeth Moss an Emmy award. (Full disclosure: Margaret Atwood’s compelling and frightening book did not make either of us want to relive the experience as a drama . . . but we hear that it’s great.) Now Moss has signed on to a film project about the 1960s women’s abortion collective Jane–a group that began by referring Chicago women to a safe abortion practitioner. When the women discovered that the provider was not actually a physician, they realized that they themselves could learn to perform abortions–and they did. Jane and the Chicago Clergy Consultation Service had a respectful relationship: the clergy had national contacts as well as social and legal standing as clergy; Jane could offer low-cost local abortions, while the CCS generally referred out of state. For the full story, we highly recommend Laura Kaplan’s book The Story of Jane.

D.A. Dirks and Dr. Willie Parker meet again, at least on the Seminary Co-op Bookstore‘s new podcast, Open Stacks. This episode, “Faith in Choice,” combines their separate Co-op events from this summer. D.A. talks with Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar, associate professor of Christian ethics at Loyola University Chicago, about the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion. Dr. Parker, author of Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice, talks with Dr. Melissa Gilliam, a gynecologist professor at the University of Chicago, about his journey to become an abortion provider in the Deep South. At the June 22, 2017 event, D.A. was delighted to find among the audience a good friend of the late Rev. Dr. Spencer Parsons, chair of the Chicago CCS, and you’ll hear her addition to the conversation during the podcast. Click here to listen or find the Open Stacks podcast on iTunes and elsewhere.

Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago asked us for a selected list of books related to To Offer Compassion. Check the link for some of our favorites, ranging from everything-that-is-old-is-new-again (Shirley Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed, 1970) to recent publications (Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena R. Gutiérrez, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice). Chicagoans will be especially interested in Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, and The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan. Check the bookstore link for our full list, with our notes on each book!